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Some of the most amazing coffees I’ve ever tasted have been winners from the Cup of Excellence competition. The program has been referred to as the Oscars of coffee and seeks to identify the best beans from many of the top coffee farms in the world. An international jury of professional coffee tasters is invited to the host country to cup the selected entries. Cup of Excellence competitions have been held in Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Rwanda, Costa Rica and Colombia.

On the first day of the competition there is an extensive calibration. During the next two days, the international jury cups the coffees that have been approved and passed by the national jury. On the fourth day, the jury cups about 45 coffees which have passed the first round. Coffees scoring an 84 or above during this round are awarded the prestigious Cup of Excellence.

The top ten scoring coffees are ranked again to discover the first place winner of the competition. Winning Cup of Excellence coffees are then sold through an internet auction. The most recent auction was held on January 18th, for the winning farms of the 2010 Brazilian competition. I was thrilled to see two of my friends receive the top two awards. Cláudio Carneiro Pinto’s Grota São Pedro farm was awarded first place. His coffee sold for $25.05 per pound. Carlos Segio Sanglard’s Serra do Bone took second place. His coffee fetched $12.10 per pound. Of the thirty-one winners, these were the only organic lots.

In November, I had the extremely desirable assignment of traveling to Machado, Brazil and serving as a member of the international jury. Over the course of a week, we slurped, scrutinized, evaluated, and ranked the top forty-seven selections from the 2010 Brazil coffee harvest. This was my 9th Cup of Excellence jury invitation and 6th appearance as a member of the Brazil panel. The coffees were phenomenally clean, sweet, aromatic and delicious!

Cup of Excellence co-founder George Howell explains the genesis, importance and significance of CoE:

“While I was a consultant outside of the roasting/retail business, I became involved with a United Nations project that was trying to develop higher quality coffees in order to sell at higher premiums. So when specialty coffee was really growing (1990’s), and there were many success stories, farmers were not feeling the benefit of that at all. That’s when I co-founded the Cup of Excellence, which was an international competition where we brought in roasters from Japan, Europe, The Americas and around the world to taste coffees. That suddenly really raised the price and also brought attention and identity to single farmers for the first time, so within two to three years, entire regions — not only farmers, but regions — were being discovered. Brazil had always been discounted as being poor producers of quality. Suddenly they became desirable, their prices went up. Individual farms were able to make connections to roasters and roasters to farmers. So now you had Europeans, Japanese and Americans coming to Brazil to visit those farms and buy at higher premiums.”

I recently interviewed Cup of Excellence’s other co-founder, Susie Spindler and asked her how she sees CoE as improving coffee quality. Here was her response.

["The] Cup of Excellence program has improved quality by giving farmers a financial incentive to do the best job they can. The hope of winning a Cup of Excellence supports the focus on quality above all else at the individual farm. This means that hundreds of farmers every year try to improve their quality and even if they do not win, this effort alone puts a lot more high quality coffees in the marketplace. The competition process also encourages farmers to educate themselves about the kinds of coffees the marketplace wants and with all of the cuppers and visitors now to the individual farms, higher overall quality is the end result. The program has completely busted the practice of blending everything so more coffees that are of higher quality have the opportunity to stand on their own and not enhance an otherwise poor quality blend.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Cup of Excellence, I recommend checking out their website. If you’ve never tasted a Cup of Excellence coffee, I’d enthusiastically encourage you to do so. A number of the Bay Area roasters are supporters of the program. Web searches will direct you to CoE roasters throughout the country. One word of caution, please make sure to check when the coffee was harvested and its roast date. The freshest in-season option will always be your best bet.

Also, here’s a video of coffee being cupped at a past CoE competition.